Communications Specialist Shares His 2 Cents on State of Local Media

Julius Gittens

We have aired various reports from Barbados where media personnel from across the Caribbean converged for a two-day media law seminar last week. The seminar was a component in the IMPACT Justice Project funded by the Canadian Government. In addition to looking at the laws that pertain to the media in this region, the seminar included sessions on the rights, responsibilities of the media and our duties in communicating matters of public interest. Senior journalist and independent media and communications specialist, Julius Gittens, spoke to the over sixty regional media professionals about identifying and effectively communicating issues that affect the public. He also shared with News Five his perspective on the state of media in Belize. 

Julius Gittens, Independent Media & Communications Specialist

“From my experience again it has to start with from raising my cat to Channel five. For many years it has been a broadcast, it is not only one, it’s not the only institution but it is one of the number of instructions whose journalists have traditionally been more concerned with reporting on matters of public interest and doing it thoroughly and comprehensively and with some degree of investigation, rather than engaging in the superficial, rather than support the political or the partisan political agendas of a select few or even the agendas of people in the business community. I think that one of the things that help Channel Five and some of the News editors to survive and to thrive is the society. It is the society’s responsibility for being as compared to many of the societies that I have worked in, in the eastern Caribbean, far more open, far more integrated. And really a level where we would expect to see divisions along ethnic and racial that is a far greater creation that you yourselves get credit for. That has helped you to be able to speak bolder, to speak truth to power and to have a media to support you. Now there are other challenges that confront the society and which the journalist find themselves at the front line and dangerously so. One of the things that is of great concern to me from a distance by looking to what’s happening to Belize; the ways on narco-traffickers and the extent to which the funding of drugs and guns have been able to challenge the nation state, the integrity of the state and that is something that should concern to all Belizeans.”